Travel Destinations: Cameron Highlands

Happy New Year 2009!

Time to usher in a new year with a great bang! Yea, I'll be making my travel destination Cameron Highlands vacation on the 1st Jan 2009. It's been awhile since my last holiday visit. And this time I got a new toy to bring along with me. Yep, I got myself a Digital SLR, a Canon EOS 30D for photography. It may not be the latest Canon EOS 50D now being bandied around by Canon. It's good enough for me and not as expensive as the latest model on offer. In fact there are many photographers out who are still using the older Canon EOS 20D or older models for photography. After all, it is not always the equipment that makes a photo great. It's the person behind the lens, though good equipment helps with taking a better picture.

Since the New Year will start with a bang from all those fireworks display, a quick walk from my house, trudging along my Canon EOS 30D, a set of old tripod (which reminds me I need to get a more sturdier heavier duty one, this just won't cut it out in the long run) and off I go to the open car park area of 1-Utama. I figure that would be a good place to take nice photos; not too near as that would be impossible to capture the grand view and not too far away that it will show up teeny weenie in the photo frame.

I could see many people making their way to 1-Utama too and looking for a good position to view not only the fireworks display from 1-U, but also from the direction of Ikano/Curve. Both the shopping malls would compete with firework display every New Year as well as Merdeka National Day trying to vie for more patrons to their shopping mall. I could also see another photographer with his DSLR setting up his tripod in the open car park area. Walking over was better than driving as the traffic was jam pack as revellers came by to have party. I didn't have much time to set up my camera as I cut it real close to midnight when I walked over. The fireworks display started as soon as I have placed my camera on the tripod. My initial shots were not very good as I wasn't sure what settings to use. But once I got the settings correct, the pictures were better. Only needed was the timing of when to press the shutter button. It wasn't easy and with both the shopping malls competing for attention with their fireworks display, I turned my camera on the opposite direction frequently back and forth trying to take some interesting pictures. The thunderous explosions and majestic display was greeted with cheers from the spectators especially the grand finale where a big bang from the 1-U direction only resulted in a dismal white out on my display.

The fireworks display only lasted about 15 minutes, but I did get a few nice shots. I think this shot was one of the better ones so I will just post it here for all to enjoy.

By the way, wishing you all a Happy New Year! May your dreams be fulfilled as we usher in for the year 2009!

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